Urban Fauna Lab: Valley of Beggars

🔖 Urban Fauna Lab. The Valley of Beggars is conceived by Urban Fauna Lab. a collective formed in 2011 in Moscow by the artists Alex Buldakov and Anastasia Potemkina. The group acts as a multidis-ciplinary platform engaged in the exploration of parasitic and symbiotic relationships in the urban environment and their associated adaptations. The artists investigate the social and cultural status of animals and plants, and the economic, architectural, and political implications of cohabitation between different species in the city beyond the traditional notions of ecology.
This publication, which includes series of images documenting the works of Urban Fauna Lab as well as their research process, aims not only to follow their artistic practice but also to support the assumption-at first glance apparently paradoxical-that focusing on animals might clarify human knowledge about themselves.
The book elaborates on key topics that Urban Fauna Lab have set themselves in their inquiries from the perspective of different fields of study and consists of several original contributions by invited authors-artist Anastasia Potemkina, philosopher Oxana Timofeeva. art historians Maja and Reuben Fowkes, curator Margarida Mendes in conversation with philosopher Michael Marder, historian, theorist, and architecture curator David Gissen, and philosopher Georgios Tsagdis.
The volume is introduced by a conversation between the members of the collective and the curator Katerina Cbucbalina.